musings of what once was love

Where do I begin?

How do you tell a tale so weathered yet so fresh?

So foreign yet familiar.

Your palm that once warmed my thin fingers

-nails painted lime green, the very essence of the weird period between “girl” and “woman” that merits bizarre things of that nature-

is now frosted over like the windows of my first dorm room

or perhaps a Chick-fil-a lemonade, a secret indulgence of mine.

Not that you’d know such a nuance after ill-explained absence and the passage of time.

 

I can’t seem to coil my now-steadier

-nails shaped almost like talons sharpened by years of experience wanted or not-

hands around the mere idea of you anymore with the natural ease I once knew.

But apparently you suit the thought just fine.

 

My Instagram inbox floods with cheeky emojis and brimming emotion.

I’m scared that if I dare to poke it hard enough it’ll overflow,

dousing my entire feed and life, for that matter, in young love aged like fine wine.

 

Except I don’t think wine has this kind of burn.

 

Maybe whiskey? Or something uppity like cognac.

A dessert beverage downed with tender lips and a measured inhale…

Something that, without proper warning, could carry me away on the tendrils of “what if”.

Would I ever return?

Can you close Pandora’s box before it’s even opened?

 

I wish I could tell you how badly I wanted this exact story to unfold

4 or 5 years ago.

The girl I was then begets the woman I am now.

That was before, well…

Everything.

Before I was a participant in a life I barely recognize.

Before I was sucked dry by a man dribbling forbidden fruit and the right words into my hair on my mother’s bed.

Before I knew what the diagnoses of “generalized anxiety” or “clinical depression” truly meant.

 

Alas, I can’t really relate to you how badly that now-stranger wanted you to waltz back into her life like the Rhett Butler of every teen sweetheart’s suburban school day dreams.

You were always the lighthouse while I was a wayward siren, riding whitecaps just out of your beacon’s reach.

Always the main gatekeeper, while I constantly sought entry through backdoors and alleyways.

 

My darling, in the darkest hours of adolescent anguish, it was always you for me.

And that I can never forget.

But sometimes even the strongest of faith and heart must learn to do so.

Today, I am closing the fairy tale.

Today, I am freed. 

This poem is about: 
Me
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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